Observatory: African

The Poetics and Politics of Extraction and the Environment

African
The signature project at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, this project informs the different inquiries that take place at the Centre. Our focus on extractivism and the environment is deliberate. Today’s global environmental crises and change are connected to humans and environmental exploitation. Resource extraction has shaped African environmentalism in complex and dynamic ways. We know that resource extraction in Africa cannot be decoupled from any study of nature and human ecology; science and the environment; land and de-coloniality; economics and marginality, and broader issues around land, politics, development and infrastructure. Thus, we develop an Environmental Humanities of extraction (EHfE) research approach first, to better grasp the intricate web of African extractive geographies, and second, to embed such complexity in extant and diverse ways of understanding contemporary environmentalism.
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Engaging the Environmental Publics – Seminar Series

African

Today’s environmental challenges exceed the ability of individual and fragmented research strategies. The complexities of these challenges also require a robust exchange of information, collaboration, and coproduction of knowledge. At the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, we have launched a shared and inclusive research agenda framed within a broad framework of the Environmental Humanities. The strength of the Environmental Humanities approach lays its ability to promote dialogue and collaboration amongst different academic disciplines, civil society, the corporate world, and government departments working in environmental sectors—the Environmental Publics.

We believe such dialogue is critical in understanding the complex, yet dynamic environmental challenges in this age of the Anthropocene. In these planned discussions, the Centre brings together the environmental publics to dialogue diverse environmental related issues pertinent to the African Anthropocene. Speakers are invited from within and outside the University of Pretoria to speak to broad issues related to extractivism and the environment. Our seminar series seeks to unpack and refine perspectives of extractivism and the environment by getting in touch with scientific, political, economic and social issues around the subject, and reflecting on ways of reimagining a reversal of present catastrophic changes.
African
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Climate Justice and Problems of Scale

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The aim of the project is to build “scale literacy” (Horton 2019), to generate a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the relationship between the effects of climate change and the intensification of injustices in the social, political and cultural spheres. The participating partners will contribute local perspectives, and help develop new insights into how problems of scale both contribute to, and offer ways of combating climate injustice. The project will explore climate change as a social, historical, and cultural force that transforms all lives but does so in an uneven and often unequal fashion.
This project is part of an important collaborative project being led by the Consortium for Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI), which is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The project is funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Alongside the University of Pretoria, the project includes partners from five other institutions, namely the University of Texas at Austin, the American University of Beirut, Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Sydney.
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Tafadzwa Mushonga is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS), University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her interests broadly fall within the field of political ecology, wherein she traces the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues. Her PhD work, completed under the auspices of the Environmental Humanities South Programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, contributes to the body of work critiquing the militarisation of conservation. Related to this work, Tafadzwa is currently working on publications that engage with the corollaries of conservation violence. Before her PhD, Tafadzwa has worked in the Zimbabwe environment sector for over eight years as a public officer responsible for social forestry related issues. At CAS, Tafadzwa is leading the extractivism and the environment project—the Centre’s Environmental Humanities signature project, which seeks to address environmental impacts associated with exploitation of resources in Africa. Due to her involvement in this project, and broad interest in Environmental Humanities, Tafadzwa has been recently nominated to the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institute/Mellon Global Humanities Institute on “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale.”

Melanie Jean Murcott is an Associate Professor based at the University of Cape Town’s Institute of Marine and Environmental Law. She holds an LLB from the University of Cape Town and an LLM (Constitutional and Administrative Law) from the University of Pretoria (both with distinction). She obtained her LLD (Constitutional Law) from North-West University in 2020. Before joining academia in 2012, Melanie practised as an attorney, including at Hogan Lovells (South Africa) where she was a partner. From 2012 to 2023, Melanie taught and engaged in research at the University of Pretoria. She is the author of Transformative Environmental Constitutionalism (Brill, 2022), a significant monograph which develops a novel approach to the adjudication of disputes concerning environmental protection, given that we face a planetary crisis with myriad justice implications. Melanie believes, as Maya Angelou says: “no one of us can be free until everybody is free”. Importantly for Melanie, a flourishing environment creates the necessary conditions for freedom since humans and the environment are fundamentally connected.

Rory du Plessis has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria since 2011. He is pursuing a PhD with the Division of Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health (UP). In 2014 he was awarded a pre-doc fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany. His research interests include digital and medical humanities with a strong focus on visual methodologies.

Professor Ogude obtained his B.Ed (Hons) and MA from Nairobi University and his PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand. Professor Ogude holds a NRF “B3” rating for the quality and impact of his research outputs.

He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation, London: Pluto Press, 1999. He has also co-edited, Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007, Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes, published in 2012 by Africa World Press, New Jersey and more recently edited ‘Chinua Achebe’s Legacy: Illuminations from Africa, published in 2015 by the Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria. Professor Ogude has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals in the area of African Literature and Popular Culture in East Africa

Currently, he is Deputy Director and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria – a position he took up at the beginning of May, 2013.

Preserving Earth

African Observatory

Advancing African perspectives on environmental change through indigenous knowledge, interdisciplinary research, and climate justice.
Our Mission

Reimagining Environmental Futures in Africa

The African Observatory for Environmental Humanities, housed within the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, seeks to identify, preserve, and mobilise indigenous approaches to nature conservation as a means of responding to the challenges of the Anthropocene. The Observatory’s research agenda explores the complex relationships between human societies and the environment through a range of interdisciplinary themes. These include, but are not limited to, colonial modernity, food systems and environmental sustainability, extractivism, disease ecologies, climate change, climate justice, and environmental movements. Through these areas of inquiry, the Centre aims to contribute to innovative and socially grounded approaches to environmental stewardship and sustainability.
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Climate Justice and Problems of Scale

The aim of the project is to build “scale literacy” (Horton 2019), to generate a more nuanced and holistic understanding of the relationship between the effects of climate change and the intensification of injustices in the social, political and cultural spheres.
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Observatory Affiliates

Community members, researchers and scholars.

James Ogude

Professor Ogude obtained his B.Ed (Hons) and MA from Nairobi University and his PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand. Professor Ogude holds a NRF “B3” rating for the quality and impact of his research outputs.

He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation, London: Pluto Press, 1999. He has also co-edited, Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007, Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes, published in 2012 by Africa World Press, New Jersey and more recently edited ‘Chinua Achebe’s Legacy: Illuminations from Africa, published in 2015 by the Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria. Professor Ogude has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals in the area of African Literature and Popular Culture in East Africa

Currently, he is Deputy Director and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria – a position he took up at the beginning of May, 2013.

Rory du Plessis

Rory du Plessis has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria since 2011. He is pursuing a PhD with the Division of Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health (UP). In 2014 he was awarded a pre-doc fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany. His research interests include digital and medical humanities with a strong focus on visual methodologies.

Melanie Murcott

Melanie Jean Murcott is an Associate Professor based at the University of Cape Town’s Institute of Marine and Environmental Law. She holds an LLB from the University of Cape Town and an LLM (Constitutional and Administrative Law) from the University of Pretoria (both with distinction). She obtained her LLD (Constitutional Law) from North-West University in 2020. Before joining academia in 2012, Melanie practised as an attorney, including at Hogan Lovells (South Africa) where she was a partner. From 2012 to 2023, Melanie taught and engaged in research at the University of Pretoria. She is the author of Transformative Environmental Constitutionalism (Brill, 2022), a significant monograph which develops a novel approach to the adjudication of disputes concerning environmental protection, given that we face a planetary crisis with myriad justice implications. Melanie believes, as Maya Angelou says: “no one of us can be free until everybody is free”. Importantly for Melanie, a flourishing environment creates the necessary conditions for freedom since humans and the environment are fundamentally connected.

Tafadzwa Mushonga

Tafadzwa Mushonga is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS), University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her interests broadly fall within the field of political ecology, wherein she traces the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues. Her PhD work, completed under the auspices of the Environmental Humanities South Programme at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, contributes to the body of work critiquing the militarisation of conservation. Related to this work, Tafadzwa is currently working on publications that engage with the corollaries of conservation violence. Before her PhD, Tafadzwa has worked in the Zimbabwe environment sector for over eight years as a public officer responsible for social forestry related issues. At CAS, Tafadzwa is leading the extractivism and the environment project—the Centre’s Environmental Humanities signature project, which seeks to address environmental impacts associated with exploitation of resources in Africa. Due to her involvement in this project, and broad interest in Environmental Humanities, Tafadzwa has been recently nominated to the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institute/Mellon Global Humanities Institute on “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale.”

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